


Lions and Tigers and Bears (Oh, My!)

by sabaceanbabe



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:44:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabaceanbabe/pseuds/sabaceanbabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Mags was 15 when she won her Games, but things were a lot different back then...</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lions and Tigers and Bears (Oh, My!)

**Author's Note:**

> This is as much head canon as it is fic, answering Deathmallow's request for some favorite Mags head canon.

Mags was 15 when she won her Games, the 10th Annual Hunger Games, but things were a lot different back then. The Games when Mags won were still mostly about payback, the failed rebellion still too recent, the atrocities committed (on both sides, but the Capitol has forever been about revisionist history) still too raw. The Gamemakers weren’t so creative with the horrors they dreamed up. There were no muttations: the predators in Mags’ first arena were natural born killers, not muttations, trained to kill humans.

Mags was smart and she was resourceful and she didn’t want to die. She and her district partner were cousins, had grown up together, and they decided early on to try to get as far as they could together because they wanted District 4 to win. They allied strictly for survival with the kids from Districts 2 because of their strength and 7 because of their knowledge of forestry and hunting. The alliance didn’t last long, because Mags and Eamon stuck to speaking Spanish, which, while outlawed, was still prevalent in the outlying parts of the district. The others didn’t trust them, not realizing the Spanish was as much to say “fuck you” to the Capitol as it was to have a bit of privacy.

Even so, the alliance stayed together long enough for the group to survive an uncharacteristically aggressive hyena attack with relatively few injuries. That’s when Mags first encountered the absorbent moss that also appeared in her second arena. She used it to bind her own wounds as well as those of the boy from 2, the only ones who took injuries because they were the ones who remained in the forefront of the fight.

The hyena attack happened on the third night in the arena; by the fifth night, the alliance was broken when the girl from 2 and both tributes from 7 thought they might have a better chance at winning if the other three were out of the picture. They acted accordingly; the fight was brief but vicious and in the end Mags and the girl from 7 were the only survivors. Eamon bled to death; Mags told the girl who killed him that it was only fair that she do the same just before Mags walked away.

For the next week, Mags kept to herself and recovered as best she could from her wounds, but the one on her leg became infected. She fought through it, and she survived both a mountain lion and a bear attack, the latter by climbing a tree.

On her eighteenth day in the arena, she finally ran into another tribute: the boy from District 3. Neither of them had any idea that they were the only two left – the Gamemakers hadn’t yet come up with the idea of showing the daily death toll reflected in the night sky. They were both sick, both dehydrated and suffering from exposure. The boy told her straight up that he wanted to die.

Mags didn’t even think about it. She asked him if he was sure that’s what he wanted and when he said yes, she snapped his neck. She considered it a mercy killing. It was a complete surprise to her when, following the cannon shot that announced his death, the hovercraft that descended picked her up instead of him.


End file.
